Profiles
- Tomoko Ohta

TOMOKO OHTA

Ohta’s outstanding talent and skill to achieve success
as a woman in the scientific arena was deeply rooted in her
childhood experiences and environment provided by a broad-minded
father, Mamoru Harada, and mentors, Hitoshi Kihara, Ken Kojima,
and Motoo Kimura. Their guidance provided Ohta with a firm
foundation and credibility from which to enter her name in
the major evolutionary dispute, the selectionist-neutralist
controversy.

Although Ohta studied on horticulture at the Agriculture
Department of Japan’s top university, Tokyo University,
Ohta’s hard step toward a world-class geneticist begun
when she started to work at Hitoshi Kihara’s Institute
in Yokohama. Using this experience as a steppingstone, Ohta
received a Fullbright Scholarship to study as a Ph.D. student
at North Carolina State University under the guidance of Ken
Kojima. Her contemporaries at NC State at that time were:
Bruce Weir and Henry Shaffer. The late Terumi Mukai was also
a faculty member there.
In 1967, completing her Ph.D. degree, Ohta returned to Japan
and visited Motoo Kimura at Japan’s National Institute
of Genetics (NIG) seeking a job opportunity there. Kimura
was at the final preparation for his work on the neutral theory
to present at the domestic genetics society meeting. Ohta
quickly became the major work force to collect data to complete
this effort.

In spite of several attractive job offers over the years,
Ohta spent the rest of her career at Japan’s NIG. Ohta’s
work in the field of molecular evolution has been recognized
internationally, as attested to by her recent awards and offices.
In April of 1984, Ohta became a Full Professor in the Department
of Population Genetics at Japan’s National Institute
of Genetics. In May of that year, she was appointed a Foreign
Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1985,
she received the Japan Academy Award and, in 1987, the Weldon
Memorial Prize. Ohta became Head of Department of Population
Genetics at NIG in 1988, and served as the Vice-Director of
the National Institute of Genetics from 1989 to 1991. She
was appointed to be Vice-President of the Evolution Society
in 1993. In 2002, Ohta was selected to be a Foreign Member
of the National Academy of Science of the United States, and
received the “Person of Cultural Merit” from Japanese
emperor in 2002. She also received special prizes as a distinguished
female scholar. She was the inaugural recipient of Saruhashi
Prize from the Society for the Bright Future of Women Scientists
in 1981, as well as the Avon Special Prize for Women in 1986.

This Profile was written by Tomoko Y. Steen. It was last
updated on 9/9/2004.